In today’s busy schedule of work, you plan for a movie but forget to silence your mobile phone when inside the theatre. Imagine an interesting quiet scene happening with everyone glued on to the screen and suddenly your mobile phone rings at the largest volume. Imagine the deadly stares directed towards you as you manually put your phone into stealth mode. A new Microsoft patent, if implemented upon in the near future, can save you from this kind of embarrassment!
Microsoft recently patented a technology called as ‘Inconspicuous Mode’ where a mobile device can automatically run on a silent profile in response to environmental needs (eg: upon switching off lights in a movie theater).
According to the patent, Inconspicuous Mode would be a setting that adjusts your smartphone’s visual and audio levels, based on GPS information and at least one environmental criterion. A simple example would be your phone detecting your presence in a movie theater based on GPS and also detecting lack of luminance through the visual lens and then automatically adjusting the audio level and visual output accordingly.
This technology, if worked upon in the future, can save a mobile user from embarrassing moments during a conference, a meeting, a classroom session or maybe in a movie theater. Maybe, Microsoft has plans to include such-a-kind of feature in the next Windows Phone version.
Nothing can be ascertained for the moment but one thing’s for sure: Microsoft has something interesting up its sleeves.
